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How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine. by Juan Ramon Jimenez, translated by Robert Bly
Tempus fugit...
This spectacular image was taken after the earthquake in Finale Emilia the northern Italy region of Emilia Roma…

Awareness is the basis, or what you might call the “support,” of the mind. It is steady and unchanging, like the pole to which the flag of ordinary consciousness is attached. When we recognize and become grounded in awareness of awareness, the “wind” of emotion may still blow. But instead of being carried away by the wind, we turn our attention inward: Oh, this is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m thinking.

As we do so, a bit of space opens up within us. With practice, that space - which is the mind’s natural clarity - begins to expand and settle. We can begin to watch our thoughts and emotions without necessarily being affected by them quite as powerfully or vividly as we’re used to. We can still feel our feelings, think our thoughts, but slowly our identity shifts from a person who defines him- or herself as lonely, ashamed, frightened, or hobbled by low self-esteem to a person who can look at loneliness, shame, and low self-esteem as movements of the mind.
by Yongey M…

by Christian de Quincey, PhD
Psychologist William James had just finished a lecture on the nature of
reality when a little old lady approached him. “Excuse me, Professor,”
she said, “but I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong. The world is really
supported on the back of a great big turtle.”
The venerable professor, being a gentleman, decided to humor the woman: “Tell me, then, what is holding the turtle up?”
Quick as a flash, the old lady snapped back: “Another turtle, of course.”
“And what’s supporting that turtle?” James asked, trying
gently to get her to see her mistake. The conversation went on like this
for another round or two until the little old lady interrupted with a
noticeable tremor of exasperation:
“Save your breath, sonny. It’s turtles all the way down.”
At least so the story goes. True or not, the “turtle” incident
illustrates a fundamental intuition we all share about the nature of
reality: Something can’t come from nothing.Something
must “go all the way down” or…

A samurai named Nobushige came to Hakuin and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"
"Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.
"I am a samurai," the warrior replied.
"You, a samurai?!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."
Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin
retained his calm and continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull
to cut off my head."
As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here, my dear, open the gates of hell!"
At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.
"Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin...
A temple door at Kandy

by Andrew Cohen
In traditional Eastern mysticism, it has been said that the unborn,
uncreated, unmanifest empty void out of which the entire material cosmos
emerged is infinite. It has no beginning and no end. It is what the
Buddha called the Unborn. It is an Absolute dimension of reality that is
both birthless and deathless. The material universe, on the other hand,
is considered to be finite.
The Miroku Bosatsu or the “Buddha of the future”
Even though it is vast in its expanse, it
is ultimately relative, because it has a beginning and an end. It was
created. However, cosmologists are now making the extraordinary
discovery that the material universe is in fact not finite but infinite.
And if what these cosmologists are discovering is true, we need
to rethink this traditional mystical assumption. If the evolutionary
process and everything contained within it are part of an infinite unfolding as they are finding - if it's not merely inconceivably vast but it's lite…